Florida Football: ESPN QBR rates Graham Mertz worst SEC QB in Week 1

When evaluating what went wrong for Florida football against Utah, many people didn’t point to the play of Graham Mertz as the reason why the Gators lost. His final stat line was 31/44, passing for 333 yards with one touchdown and one interception.

There was a hint of stat padding to that line, but it was far from a disaster.

Enter ESPN to tell you Mertz was a disaster.

Florida Football: Questions ‘Bout Ratings

ESPN’s QBR metric has been around since 2011. Often looked at with a skeptical eye, the rating attempts to give context to a QB’s play beyond just the stat line.

On ESPN’s website, they say QBR:

"“ESPN’s Total Quarterback Rating (Total QBR), which was released in 2011, has never claimed to be perfect, but unlike other measures of quarterback performance, it incorporates all of a quarterback’s contributions to winning, including how he impacts the game on passes, rushes, turnovers and penalties. Also, since QBR is built from the play level, it accounts for a team’s level of success or failure on every play to provide the proper context and then allocates credit to the quarterback and his teammate to produce a clearer measure of quarterback efficiency.”"

It is with that in mind that we take a peek at the QBR rating for every QB in the SEC after week one.

By ESPN’s metrics, Mertz was the worst QB in the SEC during week one, and by a lot.

Admittedly, traditional QB rating pits Mertz as next to worst, only ahead of Kentucky’s Devin Leary.

What seems to be dinging Mertz is that his average yards per attempt was 7.6 yards, 2nd worst in the SEC during week one.

But also keep in mind all last season, Mertz had a yards per attempt of 7.5 yards, and his traditional QB rating from Thursday of 137 tops the rating Anthony Richardson had last season of 131.

Also, keep in mind that 11 of the 14 teams in the SEC had the benefit of playing cupcakes, allowing some of these stat lines to be wildly inflated.

What feels extremely off about this ESPN QBR is the insinuation that Mertz’s play was negative against Utah. Their system is set up so that a rating of 50 is considered average. Giving Mertz a rating of 30.4 feels like someone might need to recalibrate the system.

With that said, Mertz will get his opportunity to stat pad this week against McNeese State.

We’ll see if the goalpost continues to shift what constitutes solid play.